The whole saga of MPs allowances and expenses has been going on for quite a while now and up until now I have (mostly) avoided blogging about it. I’ve avoided it mainly for health reasons. Every time I see one of their self-important, smug, shit-eating faces on the TV or read about their repeated rape of the déclassé proletariat in the news I start to feel nauseous, my heart rate raises to an uncomfortable just-eaten-a-deep-fried-Mars-bar level and I then need to sit in a darkened room for a while in case I suddenly ‘Hulk-up’!
Incidentally, when I say this sorry saga has been going on for quite a while I don’t mean since the Daily Torygraph published their first ‘scoop’ a the beginning of April this year, I remember having a laugh about it as far back as the middle of 2005, when Armando Iannucci’s fabulous ‘The Thick of It’ first made me laugh at the absurdity of corruption in the MPs allowances and expenses system.
I’m not laughing now...
I don’t actually care that they are all claiming expenses. If there is a need for something to be purchased that is reasonably required for them to be able to do their job, then that, in my mind, is OK. The fact that the growing list of embarassing items contains toilet seats (glittery or otherwise), jellied eels, a Corby trouser press and even tampons for a guy (I’m assuming the immigration minister Phil Woolas is a guy, although I haven’t personally checked inside his Ys), is all an amusing and titilating distraction from the real problem...
The real problem is the fact that the people we entrust (and pay) to govern the country think that this is acceptable behaviour. That the fact it doesn’t appear to be against the wording of the rules means that they believe they can justify procuring anything they want and we, the plebeians, foot the bill for it. The fact that it is morally bankrupt doesn’t appear to be an issue.
Whoever wrote the rule book probably didn’t think to include anthing to stop these right honourable members claiming for cleaning their moat, changing their lighbulbs or building a house for their fucking ducks. This might be because any reasonable person (never mind an honourable one) would possibly stop for a second while they are filling in their legitimate expenses claim and say to themselves; “Hold on a second... I’ve already paid this mortgage off... This could be considered taking the piss...”.
Many of these parasites have defended their overblown claims by saying they were made within the rules and were agreed with the fees office. To me, this smacks rather too much of the of the old Nuremberg defence. Frankly, we deserve better. If you’re going to try to justify your theft and deception, at least try to use your imagination.
There has also been a fair bit of commentary saying that the poor MPs are paid only a small basic salary and that any radical overhaul of the allowances system means that they would have to substantially increase MPs basic wage. This is simply a load of bollocks. MPs are paid an annual salary of £64,776– more than 2.5x the UK average salary (£24,809) or a massive 6.1x the UK minimum wage of £10,428.60 (assuming a typical 35hr working week for workers over 21). According to their own statistics, their, so called, small wage places them firmly in the top 10% of wage earners in the country, so please don’t try to make us feel sorry for you. If you want to earn the big money, go and work for RBS, it is public-sector after all.
Following the Nolan Committee's First Report on Standards in Public Life in 1994, our public servants, including MPs, are supposed to adhere to The Seven Principles of Public Life; Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty, and Leadership. There are very few of our MPs who have shown any of these admirable traits recently. It would appear that these are not so much Principals, more like pointers or suggestions. Just like the serving suggestions you get on the back of a ready meal, a nice helpful alternative that no-one ever follows.
So, to any MPs who might happen across this humble blog, here’s a radical idea. You can keep your top-10%-of-wage-earners-salary; after all we want to attract at least the top 10% of intellect to the job. You can continue to claim for reasonable expenses "wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred from the purpose of performing your Parliamentary duties", but, for fuck’s sake, get someone with a bit of nous to police it. If you then want a house for your daughter, a new marble table, mock tudor beams, a 42” plasma screen TV or even hundreds of bags of horse shit – buy it from your salary like the rest of us. After all, that’s what all of us ‘little people’ do when we get paid – it’s called a job.
Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry...
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Friday 22 May 2009
I dreamed a dream...
I would like to wish Susan Boyle good luck with the TV popularity contest next week.
She has endured her fifteen minutes of fame through a rollercoaster ride of derision and condecension, but she has at least displayed a modicum of the the elusive titular talent that the good Mr. Cowell and his irrelevant stage-dressing companions have futilely tried to assure us that “Britain’s got”.
In case you’ve missed the story arc, I’ll summarise it as succinctly as I can: a fairly unremarkable older woman, who has a fairly unremarkable life and a rather less than comely appearance has a reasonably nice voice. She performed on a TV ‘talent’ show and appeared to catch out the audience and judges by showing that a middle-aged homely fat bird can sing a bit. She then took the media world by storm...
I have been vaguely fascinated by the way various ‘entertainment’ media have propagandised this non-story. I’ll grant you that the woman has a reasonably nice voice, but let’s put this into a bit of perspective here, we’re not talking Kiri Te Kanawa or Montserrat Caballé (or even Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston or a any host of others depending on your musical preferences).
The story that the media are trying to sell us has got little to do with a human interest story, even less to do with newly discovered talent from deepest darkest West Lothian, and, unfortunately, absolutely fuck all to do with Susan Boyle.
The real story is another typical media hypocricy.
Despite the fact that the pretty people are everywhere - on film, TV and magazines, despite the fact that we have makeover shows on 24-hours a day on 500 different channels, despite the fact we are bombarded with features on how to get the perfect body/face/complection in just “5 easy steps” and we are all going to die because of our lifestyle (eating too much, not eating the right things, drinking too much, not doing enough exercise and so on) – you, yes YOU, you can still be a star! Even with the frizzy hair, pockmarked pizza face and the spare tractor tyre around your waist, if you really want it and you live your dream, YOU can still be the Next Big Thing.
Susan Boyle is no longer a real person. She’s an allegory for all of us living normal, unremarkable, unrecognised existences. All she’s there for is to fuel the media beast, to ensure that there is a continuing line of mediocre people ready willing and able to prostrate themselves in front of the great god public scrutiny for our cheap viewing pleasure and for something vacuous to digest along with the makeover shows and “Top 10 skinny celebrities”.
I really do wish her well with the contest and I hope she milks it for every single penny she can get. In real life, she’s most likely not going to be the Next Big Thing, just the last one...
She has endured her fifteen minutes of fame through a rollercoaster ride of derision and condecension, but she has at least displayed a modicum of the the elusive titular talent that the good Mr. Cowell and his irrelevant stage-dressing companions have futilely tried to assure us that “Britain’s got”.
In case you’ve missed the story arc, I’ll summarise it as succinctly as I can: a fairly unremarkable older woman, who has a fairly unremarkable life and a rather less than comely appearance has a reasonably nice voice. She performed on a TV ‘talent’ show and appeared to catch out the audience and judges by showing that a middle-aged homely fat bird can sing a bit. She then took the media world by storm...
I have been vaguely fascinated by the way various ‘entertainment’ media have propagandised this non-story. I’ll grant you that the woman has a reasonably nice voice, but let’s put this into a bit of perspective here, we’re not talking Kiri Te Kanawa or Montserrat Caballé (or even Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston or a any host of others depending on your musical preferences).
The story that the media are trying to sell us has got little to do with a human interest story, even less to do with newly discovered talent from deepest darkest West Lothian, and, unfortunately, absolutely fuck all to do with Susan Boyle.
The real story is another typical media hypocricy.
Despite the fact that the pretty people are everywhere - on film, TV and magazines, despite the fact that we have makeover shows on 24-hours a day on 500 different channels, despite the fact we are bombarded with features on how to get the perfect body/face/complection in just “5 easy steps” and we are all going to die because of our lifestyle (eating too much, not eating the right things, drinking too much, not doing enough exercise and so on) – you, yes YOU, you can still be a star! Even with the frizzy hair, pockmarked pizza face and the spare tractor tyre around your waist, if you really want it and you live your dream, YOU can still be the Next Big Thing.
Susan Boyle is no longer a real person. She’s an allegory for all of us living normal, unremarkable, unrecognised existences. All she’s there for is to fuel the media beast, to ensure that there is a continuing line of mediocre people ready willing and able to prostrate themselves in front of the great god public scrutiny for our cheap viewing pleasure and for something vacuous to digest along with the makeover shows and “Top 10 skinny celebrities”.
I really do wish her well with the contest and I hope she milks it for every single penny she can get. In real life, she’s most likely not going to be the Next Big Thing, just the last one...
Monday 18 May 2009
Bring on the spangly green dancer...
Every year I go over to a close friend’s house to enjoy the spectacle that is the Eurovision song contest. Every year follows a similar template. My friend lives out in the countryside, so every year I pick up another friend who lives near me and we then drive over to our mutual friend’s house where we meet with a larger party of friends and we swap pleasantries for an hour or so before the main event.
Every year my friend’s wife puts on a fabulous buffet spread and we enjoy the wonderful food, have a few drinks (non-alcoholic for me of course) and generally enjoy each other’s company before subjecting ourselves to trial by Europop.
Every year my friend’s wife very thoughtfully prints out scoring sheets from the BBC Eurovision website and warns us not to start our scoring too low at the beginning, and we all laugh knowing this to be oh-so true.
We then vaguely watch the show and laugh at the funny Europeans. We discuss how the tactical voting will go and, as expected, groan when all the neighbouring countries give each other “douze points” as we predicted. We laugh at the outfits, we laugh at the songs, we laugh at the dance routines, we laugh at the token fat one (the only one who can actually sing), we laugh at the scary one, we laugh at the Germans, we laugh, we laugh, we laugh...
All very middle-class, all very jolly, all very nice and all very pleasant.
This year followed exactly the same template as every other year and I had a nice time in nice surrounds with nice company and nice food. Nice. Nice. Nice.
However, something new happened this year. This year there was a revelation, a revelation in the unlikeliest form.
Albania.
Don’t get me wrong, the song was still shit like all the rest, the singer was a forgettable Europop singer like the rest, but the act, my god, the act was a revelation!
Now, before you read on you have to see this shit...! Seriously, watch it now...! Don’t worry I’ll wait until you get back...
Did you see what I mean! The guy in the tight green sequined body suit was wonderfully bizarre. He had absolutely nothing to do with anything, he wasn't dancing, he wasn't singing, he wasn't even co-ordinated with the others, in fact, he was just truly fucking weird!. I’m not sure if he thought he was on a green screen and was meant to be moving the set around, or in fact what the fuck he was doing there, but wow! All I could think was that he should be taken on by the rest of the TV channels.
Imagine how much more palatable the evening news would be if he was fannying around behind the newsreaders and they didn’t acknowledge his presence. Who would really care that the politicians were fucking us up the ass by having us pay for them to over-legislate, over bureaucratise, have illegal wars, allow the elderly to live in poverty, under-educate the youth, demolish our economy, and cripple the NHS – all this while still making us pay to clean out their fucking moat like the good little serfs that we are.
That spangly green guy could keep us all happy.
“Look darling, our trusted politicians and public servants have unexpectedly let us down. They have stolen our hard earned cash while systematically destroying our economy, placing all of our jobs at risk and borrowing so much money that our children’s, children’s, children will still be picking up the bill”
“True dear, but that prancing little green fucker has completely distracted me from my despair and my fear for the future with his modern improvisational dance...”
Surely, it's got to be worth a try?
Every year my friend’s wife puts on a fabulous buffet spread and we enjoy the wonderful food, have a few drinks (non-alcoholic for me of course) and generally enjoy each other’s company before subjecting ourselves to trial by Europop.
Every year my friend’s wife very thoughtfully prints out scoring sheets from the BBC Eurovision website and warns us not to start our scoring too low at the beginning, and we all laugh knowing this to be oh-so true.
We then vaguely watch the show and laugh at the funny Europeans. We discuss how the tactical voting will go and, as expected, groan when all the neighbouring countries give each other “douze points” as we predicted. We laugh at the outfits, we laugh at the songs, we laugh at the dance routines, we laugh at the token fat one (the only one who can actually sing), we laugh at the scary one, we laugh at the Germans, we laugh, we laugh, we laugh...
All very middle-class, all very jolly, all very nice and all very pleasant.
This year followed exactly the same template as every other year and I had a nice time in nice surrounds with nice company and nice food. Nice. Nice. Nice.
However, something new happened this year. This year there was a revelation, a revelation in the unlikeliest form.
Albania.
Don’t get me wrong, the song was still shit like all the rest, the singer was a forgettable Europop singer like the rest, but the act, my god, the act was a revelation!
Now, before you read on you have to see this shit...! Seriously, watch it now...! Don’t worry I’ll wait until you get back...
Did you see what I mean! The guy in the tight green sequined body suit was wonderfully bizarre. He had absolutely nothing to do with anything, he wasn't dancing, he wasn't singing, he wasn't even co-ordinated with the others, in fact, he was just truly fucking weird!. I’m not sure if he thought he was on a green screen and was meant to be moving the set around, or in fact what the fuck he was doing there, but wow! All I could think was that he should be taken on by the rest of the TV channels.
Imagine how much more palatable the evening news would be if he was fannying around behind the newsreaders and they didn’t acknowledge his presence. Who would really care that the politicians were fucking us up the ass by having us pay for them to over-legislate, over bureaucratise, have illegal wars, allow the elderly to live in poverty, under-educate the youth, demolish our economy, and cripple the NHS – all this while still making us pay to clean out their fucking moat like the good little serfs that we are.
That spangly green guy could keep us all happy.
“Look darling, our trusted politicians and public servants have unexpectedly let us down. They have stolen our hard earned cash while systematically destroying our economy, placing all of our jobs at risk and borrowing so much money that our children’s, children’s, children will still be picking up the bill”
“True dear, but that prancing little green fucker has completely distracted me from my despair and my fear for the future with his modern improvisational dance...”
Surely, it's got to be worth a try?
Saturday 16 May 2009
Social networking saves the world...
It’s funny. Despite being the vitriol filled sod that I am, I have never really had any problem with the idea of social networking. I suppose this is mostly because it used to be so easy to ignore, it seldom crossed into mainstream media and the exceptions tended towards the exceptional - the occasional celeb crying for help while being stuck in a lift (a la Stephen Fry) or someone sharing their nervous breakdown (a la too many to list).
The tide of banality appears to have turned.
Most of us started by reinventing ourselves with a brief profile on Friends Reunited, however, this was too limited in its scope. Few of us used it to do much more than cry for the nostalgia of the past with people we knew at school or college. For me, this meant having a look to see who was continuing to shine with the promise of mediocrity that was shown ‘back in the day’. But Friends United lied to me. The people on were not my friends - separated or otherwise. If they were my friends we wouldn’t have lost touch, we would have made the effort because we wanted to be BFFs. They were an accident, they were flotsam, they were convenient acquaintances due to location and access, but mostly they were not my friends.
Although a large number of social networking sites popped up at around the same time, MySpace seemed to be de rigueur for a while. Not only did I now have access to keep up with all my old not-friends, I can chose to become “friends” with new virtual people (or “friends”) I have never heard of! This was revolutionary...
I could soon chose between a whole host of service options to enable me to not really engage with my “friends” – MySpace was joined in the list by Bebo and Facebook which really took this disengagement to a new level. I could now look at photographs of the lives of my not-friends, I could listen to their music, I could contribute comments to their musings, I could wish them belated happy birthdays and coo over their children and admire their cats, and I could feel the growing pains of their virtual angst.
But by far the most important thing was that I could do all of this whilst naked in front of my computer and in the comfort of my own home. I could still be a part of a community of real people without all that pesky physical interaction where I would have to look into their eyes, laugh with them (other than LOL and LMAO), touch them, smell their body odour, read their body language, insult them, be insulted by them and generally touch lives with them.
And then, whole new level of non interaction... I can further streamline my non- communication with all of my non-friends, I can follow people without being accused of stalking, I can even have followers (praise Lord SpiderBoz), I can tell the whole virtual world my deepest, darkest thoughts – as long as it’s done in 140 characters or less. Good god, I can Tweet...!
Twitter just makes the whole process of not communicating even easier, I barely have to think and I can tell the virtual world all about what I’m not thinking... Wow! How did I cope when I had to make an effort to try to like people, or to make an effort to love or hate people, or even to leave my house.
Bring the virtual revolution on. I can’t wait to see less of the ones I love, I can’t wait to further isolate my life whilst keeping it open to the world, I can’t wait to not meet new and interesting people and not interact with the world around me. Bring it on...
Actually, no. I'm going out. I feel the need to see someone real...
The tide of banality appears to have turned.
Most of us started by reinventing ourselves with a brief profile on Friends Reunited, however, this was too limited in its scope. Few of us used it to do much more than cry for the nostalgia of the past with people we knew at school or college. For me, this meant having a look to see who was continuing to shine with the promise of mediocrity that was shown ‘back in the day’. But Friends United lied to me. The people on were not my friends - separated or otherwise. If they were my friends we wouldn’t have lost touch, we would have made the effort because we wanted to be BFFs. They were an accident, they were flotsam, they were convenient acquaintances due to location and access, but mostly they were not my friends.
Although a large number of social networking sites popped up at around the same time, MySpace seemed to be de rigueur for a while. Not only did I now have access to keep up with all my old not-friends, I can chose to become “friends” with new virtual people (or “friends”) I have never heard of! This was revolutionary...
I could soon chose between a whole host of service options to enable me to not really engage with my “friends” – MySpace was joined in the list by Bebo and Facebook which really took this disengagement to a new level. I could now look at photographs of the lives of my not-friends, I could listen to their music, I could contribute comments to their musings, I could wish them belated happy birthdays and coo over their children and admire their cats, and I could feel the growing pains of their virtual angst.
But by far the most important thing was that I could do all of this whilst naked in front of my computer and in the comfort of my own home. I could still be a part of a community of real people without all that pesky physical interaction where I would have to look into their eyes, laugh with them (other than LOL and LMAO), touch them, smell their body odour, read their body language, insult them, be insulted by them and generally touch lives with them.
And then, whole new level of non interaction... I can further streamline my non- communication with all of my non-friends, I can follow people without being accused of stalking, I can even have followers (praise Lord SpiderBoz), I can tell the whole virtual world my deepest, darkest thoughts – as long as it’s done in 140 characters or less. Good god, I can Tweet...!
Twitter just makes the whole process of not communicating even easier, I barely have to think and I can tell the virtual world all about what I’m not thinking... Wow! How did I cope when I had to make an effort to try to like people, or to make an effort to love or hate people, or even to leave my house.
Bring the virtual revolution on. I can’t wait to see less of the ones I love, I can’t wait to further isolate my life whilst keeping it open to the world, I can’t wait to not meet new and interesting people and not interact with the world around me. Bring it on...
Actually, no. I'm going out. I feel the need to see someone real...
Tuesday 12 May 2009
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